In it, Freud says: “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to.”

Right-wing rolling news channel Fox is one of the few broadcast news channels in the world to be highly profitable. According to the New York Times it is on track to make $700m of operating profit this year.

Rupert Murdoch’s biographer Martin Wolff is today quoted in The Independent: “Matthew Freud, a PR man of extraordinary craftiness, is not going to say anything off the cuff, certainly not that. I have never heard a shoe drop as loud.

“I don’t believe Roger Ailes can continue in this company. Not only has he been told that its controlling shareholders don’t want him, but he has been told they think he is despicable. Something has just been set in motion.”